What a month! It’s likely that many of you know exactly what we were working on, as we’ve been publishing updates to Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 on the PTU as quickly and as quickly as possible. As you’ve observed, your testing and feedback has allowed us to zero in faster on the various bugs that were preventing us from going live. We’re pleased to announce that as of today (December 11, 2015) Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 is available live! But before you start exploring Crusader, let’s look back at what we did in November.

We’d also like to invite you to tune in on Wednesday, December 16th at 11 AM PST for our annual Holiday livestream. We have some exciting content we’re looking forward to sharing with everyone before our teams enjoy some hard-earned time off for the holidays. Tune in and help us round out a great year!

2015 was quite a year for Star Citizen! Since the launch of Alpha 2.0, the team has been glued to their monitors watching backers stream and play and adventure in the first corner of the universe we’re building. There’s plenty of work still to be done, but we’re thrilled to have a version of the game available for play that (we believe) shows the project’s true potential. We hope you’re enjoying 2.0 (or 2.1, if you’re a fan of the PTU!)… there’s plenty more to see in the coming days! But before we look ahead, we’d like to look back at what everyone accomplished in December. Cloud Imperium Games closed for the holidays, allowing our developers some much needed rest and family time… but that doesn’t mean we didn’t make a lot of progress. Read on for our December monthly report to find out just what everyone was up to…

2016 is here, and we’re ready to rock! We kicked off the month with a series of summits in the UK and Los Angeles to prepare for the new year. There’s still one more to go, an AI summit in Frankfurt happening next week, but we’re ready to take on 2016! Now that our i’s are dotted and our t’s crossed, we’re ready to continue getting some great content out to the community. Specifically: going forward, you can expect to see regular updates to the Star Citizen Alpha. We are shooting for one significant patch each month. Expect to see this cycle repeated: numerous PTU test patches followed by a live release and then a lull as content for the next patch is prepared and integrated. As I write this, the team is working on content for Alpha 2.2. Expect to hear more about this release very soon! Meanwhile, here are the specifics of what each Star Citizen studio was working on in January…

We had an extra day this February, and we put it to good use! Star Citizen Alpha 2.2 is now ‘live’ and Citizens everywhere are making good use of the new features to expand their adventures around Crusader. Between the hostility system, physicalized EVA and the increased instance limit, things are hopping! An extra special thank you to our front line PTU testers this month, who helped us put out an astounding nine builds before we released 2.2! With 2.2 live, the team is eager to move on to features to be added for 2.3… but before that happens, we’ll take our monthly look back at Star Citizen’s progress for February 2016.

Your monthly report is here. But first, a small patch! We’ve just issued Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.1 to the live servers, which includes a variety of bug fixes and balance changes. You can access it via the launcher and you can read the complete patch notes here.

If you’ve played Star Citizen Alpha 2.3, you already know that March was a month for REALLY BIG SHIPS! We launched the hangar-ready Starfarer this month, along with the long-awaited Xi’An scout… and there’s plenty more to follow! Today we will be checking in with all of our studios and outsource partners to see what the team was working on in March… but first, we’d like to share some of the fruits of that labor: some of the work we’ve been doing on seamless EVA transitions that you’ll be seeing in an upcoming patch. Check it out and then read on to find out the work that went into making this a reality!

Yesterday, we pushed the first iteration of Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 to the Persistent Test Universe, and much of the month of April was spent in service of that endeavor. Alpha 2.4 promises to be one of our biggest patches yet: not only adding new front-facing content like ships and functional stores, but long-awaited “under-the-hood” changes that create the necessary foundation for all the content yet to come.

These monthly reports are one of my favorite things we do here at Cloud Imperium Games. Even with all the internet shows like the 10 For Series, Around the Verse and Reverse the Verse that share information on the development of our games every week, there’s still so much more that the hundreds of people worldwide supporting Star Citizen work on. We may not always be able to share every detail, but I’m confident in both the quantity and quality of that which we share each and every week; and in this case every month.

With that, let’s dive in and see what each studio has been working on in the month of April.

As most of you know, we’ve been working hard to launch Star Citizen Alpha 2.4 this month. The patch is currently on the PTU undergoing testing from our backers. As they can attest, we’re battling some blockers largely related to networking. We’re making good progress, and will keep you updated… we’re as eager as anyone to see our backers battling it out aboard Starfarers, shopping for clothes and earning in-game currency. Meanwhile, development goes on for all aspects of Star Citizen and Squadron 42, whether they’re intended for Alpha 2.4 or a future release. Without further ado, here’s May, 2016 straight from the developers that lived it!

We’re officially in the second half of 2016 now, and the already impressive progress on Star Citizen and Squadron 42 continues to speed up and cover more ground every month as more and more game systems, design systems, build systems and staff come online. For Star Citizen, a lot of this month focused on development for Alpha 2.5, 2.6 and even 2.7. For Gamescom and CitizenCon, work continues on demos that showcase systems coming online in those patches and beyond. For a better look at what that all entails, let’s dive right in.

It should come as no surprise that August was a very busy month. Teams all around the world were hard at work on the Gamescom demo, which showcased staggeringly new tech from a variety of disciplines. Meanwhile, we also pushed 2.5 Live, releasing the Grim HEX outlaw station, Argo and Reliant Kore out to all of our backers.

There’s no time to rest as we have big plans for Citizen Con, which is right around the corner, and 2.6 development and testing is well underway as well.

October had the Star Citizen dev team turned up to eleven, with CitizenCon and the upcoming 2.6 patch being the main drivers for the month. While we didn’t wind up being able to show off all our efforts on Squadron 42 (make sure to check out the special ATV episode for more details on that, our Homestead Demo highlighted a ton of new and upcoming features including V2 procedural planets, epic weather effects, and the appearance of a Valakkar – a massive sandworm native to Leir III.

Meanwhile, devs continued their push to get the 2.6 patch ready for release. From constant QA testing of Star Marine to a significant overhaul of the front end menu system, there are plenty of details below on what various teams around the world have been able to achieve these last few weeks.

November 2016 was one for the record books! We celebrated our fourth anniversary with a special ‘air show’-themed livestream featuring the return of everyone’s favorite Galactic Gear (now Galactic Tour!) host. We launched the long-awaited Prowler boarding ship and made great progress all around… which you can track in more detail than ever thanks to the weekly production reports we now share with the community.

Work continued on Star Citizen Alpha 2.6, 3.0 and Squadron 42 this month, with a focus on getting Star Marine ready for launch. We’ve been having an incredible time watching it come together, and we’re excited to let the Star Citizen community exerience the pitched FPS battles our Quality Assurance teams have been putting through their paces. Now let’s take a look back at the month that was November, 2016.